IGLESIAS

iglesias, spanish favourite and adventurer, was born at antwerp. his father, francisco calderon, a member of a family ennobled by charles v., was a captain in the army who became afterwards _comendador mayor_ of aragon, presumably by the help of his son. the mother was a fleming, said by calderon to have been a lady by birth and called by him maria sandelin. she is said by others to have been first the mistress and then the wife of francisco calderon. rodrigo is said to have been born out of wedlock. in 1598 he entered the service of the duke of lerma as secretary. the accession of philip iii. in that year made lerma, who had unbounded influence over the king, master of spain. calderon, who was active and unscrupulous, made himself the trusted agent of lerma. in the general scramble for wealth among the worthless intriguers who governed in the name of philip iii., calderon was conspicuous for greed, audacity and insolence. he was created count of oliva, a knight of santiago, commendador of ocana in the order, secretary to the king (_secretario de camara_), was loaded with plunder, and made an advantageous marriage with ines de vargas. as an insolent upstart he was peculiarly odious to the enemies of lerma. two religious persons, juan de santa maria, a franciscan, and mariana de san jose, prioress of la encarnacion, worked on the queen margarita, by whose influence calderon was removed from the secretaryship in 1611. he, however, retained the favour of lerma, an indolent man to whom calderon's activity was indispensable. in 1612 he was sent on a special mission to flanders, and on his return was made marques de las siete iglesias in 1614. when the queen margarita died in that year in childbirth, calderon was accused of having used witchcraft against her. soon after it became generally known that he had ordered the murder of one francisco de juaras. when lerma was driven from court in 1618 by the intrigues of his own son, the duke of uceda, and the king's confessor, the dominican aliaga, calderon was seized upon as an expiatory victim to satisfy public clamour. he was arrested, despoiled, and on the 7th of january 1620 was savagely tortured to make him confess to the several charges of murder and witchcraft brought against him. calderon confessed to the murder of juaras, saying that the man was a pander, and adding that he gave the particular reason by word of mouth since it was more fit to be spoken than written. he steadfastly denied all the other charges of murder and the witchcraft. some hope of pardon seems to have remained in his mind till he heard the bells tolling for philip iii. in march 1621. "he is dead, and i too am dead" was his resigned comment. one of the first measures of the new reign was to order his execution. calderon met his fate firmly and with a show of piety on the 21st of october 1621, and this bearing, together with his broken and prematurely aged appearance, turned public sentiment in his favour. the magnificent devotion of his wife helped materially to placate the hatred he had aroused. lord lytton made rodrigo calderon the hero of his story _calderon the courtier_. see modests de la fuente, _historia general espana_ (madrid, 1850-1867), vol. xv. pp. 452 et seq.; quevedo, _obras_ (madrid, 1794), vol. x.--_grandes anales de quince dias_. a curious contemporary french pamphlet on him, _histoire admirable et declin pitoyable advenue en la personne d'unfawory de la cour d'espagne,_ is reprinted by m.e. fournier in _varietes historiques_ (paris, 1855), vol. i. (d. h.) calderon de la barca, pedro (1600-1681), spanish dramatist and poet, was born at madrid on the 17th of january 1600. his mother, who was of flemish descent, died in 1610; his father, who was secretary to the treasury, died in 1615. calderon was educated at the jesuit college in madrid with a view to taking orders and accepting a family living; abandoning this project, he studied law at salamanca, and competed with success at the literary fetes held in honour of st isaidore at madrid (1620-1632). according to his biographer, vera tassis, calderon served with the spanish army in italy and flanders between 1625 and 1635; but this statement is contradicted by numerous legal documents which prove that calderon resided at madrid during these years. early in 1629 his brother diego was stabbed by an actor who took sanctuary in the convent of the trinitarian nuns; calderon and his friends broke into the cloister and attempted to seize the offender. this violation was denounced by the fashionable preacher, hortensio felix paravicino (_q.v._), in a sermon preached before philip iv.; [v.04 p.0985] calderon retorted by introducing into _el principe constante_ a mocking reference (afterwards cancelled) to paravicino's gongoristic verbiage, and was committed to prison. he was soon released, grew rapidly in reputation as a playwright, and, on the death of lope de vega in 1635, was recognized as the foremost spanish dramatist of the age. a volume of his plays, edited by his brother jose in 1636, contains such celebrated and diverse productions as _la vida es sueno, el purgatorio de san patricia, la devocion de la cruz, la dama duende_ and _peor esta que estaba_. in 1636-1637 he was made a knight of the order of santiago by philip iv., who had already commissioned from him a series of spectacular plays for the royal theatre in the buen retiro. calderon was almost as popular with the general public as lope de vega had been in his zenith; he was, moreover, in high favour at court, but this royal patronage did not help to develop the finer elements of his genius. on the 28th of may 1640 he joined a company of mounted cuirassiers recently raised by olivares, took part in the catalonian campaign, and distinguished himself by his gallantry at tarragona; his health failing, he retired from the army in november 1642, and three years later was awarded a special military pension in recognition of his services in the field. the history of his life during the next few years is obscure. he appears to have been profoundly affected by the death of his mistress--the mother of his son pedro jose--about the year 1648-1649; his long connexion with the theatre had led him into temptations, but it had not diminished his instinctive spirit of devotion, and he now sought consolation in religion. he became a tertiary of the order of st francis in 1650, and finally reverted to his original intention of joining the priesthood. he was ordained in 1651, was presented to a living in the parish of san salvador at madrid, and, according to his statement made a year or two later, determined to give up writing for the stage. he did not adhere to this resolution after his preferment to a prebend at toledo in 1653, though he confined himself as much as possible to the composition of _autos sacramentales_--allegorical pieces in which the mystery of the eucharist was illustrated dramatically, and which were performed with great pomp on the feast of corpus christi and during the weeks immediately ensuing. in 1662 two of calderon's _autos_--_las ordenes militares_ and _misticay real babilonia_--were the subjects of an inquiry by the inquisition; the former was censured, the manuscript copies were confiscated, and the condemnation was not rescinded till 1671. calderon was appointed honorary chaplain to philip iv, in 1663, and the royal favour was continued to him in the next reign. in his eighty-first year he wrote his last secular play, _hado y divisa de leonido y marfisa_, in honour of charles ii.'s marriage to marie-louise de bourbon. notwithstanding his position at court and his universal popularity throughout spain, his closing years seem to have been passed in poverty. he died on the 25th of may 1681. like most spanish dramatists, calderon wrote too much and too speedily, and he was too often content to recast the productions of his predecessors. his _saber del mal y del bien_ is an adaptation of lope de vega's play, _las mudanzas de la fortuna y sucesos de don beltran de aragon_; his _selva confusa_ is also adapted from a play of lope's which bears the same title; his _encanto sin encanto_ derives from tirso de molina's _amar par senas_, and, to take an extreme instance, the second act of his _cabellos de absalon _is transferred almost bodily from the third act of tirso's _venganza de tamar_. it would be easy to add other examples of calderon's lax methods, but it is simple justice to point out that he committed no offence against the prevailing code of literary morality. many of his contemporaries plagiarized with equal audacity, but with far less success. sometimes, as in _el alcalde de zalamea_, the bold procedure is completely justified by the result; in this case by his individual treatment he transforms one of lope de vega's rapid improvisations into a finished masterpiece. it was not given to him to initiate a great dramatic movement; he came at the end of a literary revolution, was compelled to accept the conventions which lope de vega had imposed on the spanish stage, and he accepted them all the more readily since they were peculiarly suitable to the display of his splendid and varied gifts. not a master of observation nor an expert in invention, he showed an unexampled skill in contriving ingenious variants on existing themes; he had a keen dramatic sense, an unrivalled dexterity in manipulating the mechanical resources of the stage, and in addition to these minor indispensable talents he was endowed with a lofty philosophic imagination and a wealth of poetic diction. naturally, he had the defects of his great qualities; his ingenuity is apt to degenerate into futile embellishment; his employment of theatrical devices is the subject of his own good-humoured satire in _no hay burlas con el amor_; his philosophic intellect is more interested in theological mysteries than in human passions; and the delicate beauty of his style is tinged with a wilful preciosity. excelling lope de vega at many points, calderon falls below his great predecessor in the delineation of character. yet in almost every department of dramatic art calderon has obtained a series of triumphs. in the symbolic drama he is best represented by _el principe constante_, by _el magico prodigioso_ (familiar to english readers in shelley's free translation), and by _la vida es sueno_, perhaps the most profound and original of his works. his tragedies are more remarkable for their acting qualities than for their convincing truth, and the fact that in _la nina de gomez arias_ he interpolates an entire act borrowed from velez de guevara's play of the same title seems to indicate that this kind of composition awakened no great interest in him; but in _el medico de sa honra_ and _el mayor monstruo los celos_ the theme of jealousy is handled with sombre power, while _el alcalde de zalamea_ is one of the greatest tragedies in spanish literature. calderon is seen to much less advantage in the spectacular plays--_dramas de tramoya_--which he wrote at the command of philip iv.; the dramatist is subordinated to the stage-carpenter, but the graceful fancy of the poet preserves even such a mediocre piece as _los tres mayores prodigies_ (which won him his knighthood) from complete oblivion. a greater opportunity is afforded in the more animated _comedias palaciegas_, or melodramatic pieces destined to be played before courtly audiences in the royal palace: _la banda y la flor_ and _el galan fantasma_ are charming illustrations of calderon's genial conception and refined artistry. his historical plays (_la gran cenobia, las armas de la hermosura_, &c.) are the weakest of all his formal dramatic productions; _el golfo de la sirenas_ and _la purpura de la rosa_ are typical _zarzuelas_, to be judged by the standard of operatic libretti, and the _entremeses_ are lacking in the lively humour which should characterize these dramatic interludes. on the other hand, calderon's faculty of ingenious stagecraft is seen at its best in his "cloak-and-sword" plays (_comedias de capa y espada_) which are invaluable pictures of contemporary society. they are conventional, no doubt, in the sense that all representations of a specially artificial society must be conventional; but they are true to life, and are still as interesting as when they first appeared. in this kind _no siempre lo peor es cierto, la dama duende, una casa con dos puertas mala es de guardar_ and _guardate del agua mansa_ are almost unsurpassed. but it is as a writer of _autos sacramentales_ that calderon defies rivalry: his intense devotion, his subtle intelligence, his sublime lyrism all combine to produce such marvels of allegorical poetry as _la cena del rey baltasar, la vina del senor_ and _la serpiente de metal_. the _autos_ lingered on in spain till 1765, but they may be said to have died with calderon, for his successors merely imitated him with a tedious fidelity. almost alone among spanish poets, calderon had the good fortune to be printed in a fairly correct and readable edition (1682-1691), thanks to the enlightened zeal of his admirer, juan de vera tassis y villaroel, and owing to this happy accident he came to be regarded generally as the first of spanish dramatists. the publication of the plays of lope de vega and of tirso de molina has affected the critical estimate of calderon's work; he is seen to be inferior to lope de vega in creative power, and inferior to tirso de molina in variety of conception. but, setting aside the extravagances of his admirers, he is admittedly an exquisite poet, an expert in the dramatic form, and a typical representative of the [v.04 p.0986] devout, chivalrous, patriotic and artificial society in which he moved. bibliography.--h. breymann, _calderon-studien_ (munchen and berlin, 1905), i. teil, contains a fairly exhaustive list of editions, translations and arrangements; _autos sacramentales_ (madrid, 1759-1760, 6 vols.), edited by juan fernandez de apontes; _comedias_ (madrid, 1848-1850, 4 vols.), edited by juan eugenio hartzenbuch; max krenkel, _klassische buhnendichtungen der spanier_, containing _la vida es sueno, el magico prodigioso_ and _el alcalde de zalamca_ (leipzig, 1881-1887, 3 vols.); _teatro selecto_ (madrid, 1884, 4 vols.), edited by m. menendez y pelayo; _el magico prodigioso_ (heilbronn, 1877), edited by alfred morel-fatio; _select plays of calderon_ (london, 1888), edited by norman maccoll; f.w.v. schmidt, _die schauspiele calderon's_ (elberfeld, 1857); e. gunthner, _calderon und seine werke_ (freiburg i. b., 1888, 2 vols.); felipe picatoste y rodriguez, _biografia de don pedro calderon de la barca_ in _homenage a calderon_ (madrid, 1881); antonio sanchez moguel, _memoria acerca de "el magico prodigioso"_ (madrid, 1881); m. menendez y pelayo, _calderon y su teatro_ (madrid, 1881); ernest martinenche, _la comedia espagnole en france de hardy a racine_ (paris, 1900). (j. f.-k.)